See the manual (https://ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg.html). Getting ffmpeg to do
what you want is an art in itself. I like using the qscale argument to
keep the quality high, but at the cost of having large filesizes. Take a
look around the internet, this is one of those things that depends alot
on what you are willing to tolerate in terms of quality/filesize.

-Josh Vermaas

On 12/31/2015 06:34 AM, anu chandra wrote:
> Hi Josh,
>
> Many thanks for your prompt reply. Though I could use ffmpeg to
> reencode the image to movie, I just wonder if there is a way I can
> play around in ffmpeg to improve the image quality.
>
> I have noticed that, though the image quality is relatively good while
> rendering from VMD, it gets reduced while making a movie using ffmpeg.
> As you suggested I just used the ffmepg command ' ffmpeg -i
> frames-%05d.tga output.mp4 ' for generating the movie.
>
> Thanks in advance
> Anu
>
> On Wed, Dec 30, 2015 at 1:17 AM, Josh Vermaas <vermaas2_at_illinois.edu> <mailto:vermaas2_at_illinois.edu>> wrote:
>
> Hi Anu,
>
> It sounds like you are using the movie maker plugin. What I found
> was that the default encoder settings left alot to be desired, and
> as a result the animations that came out were not as aesthetically
> pleasing as I would have liked. What I would do is to turn off the
> setting in the movie maker that deletes the images automatically
> afterward, and then reencode the images into a movie afterward
> using the rendered images using ffmpeg so I could set the balance
> between filesize and image quality myself. A basic example of the
> command would be:
>
> ffmpeg -i frames-%05d.tga output.mp4
>
> Alternatively, for simple trajectory animations, you could write a
> simple rendering script in VMD and not use the movie maker altogether:
>
> for { set f 0 } { $f < [molinfo top get numframes] } { incr f } {
> animate goto $f
> render snapshot [format "frames-%05d.tga" $f]
> }
>
> -Josh Vermaas
>
>
> On 12/29/2015 06:05 PM, anu chandra wrote:
>> Dear VMD users,
>>
>> I am trying to make a movie of simulation trajectories. Though I
>> could make the movie successfully,I have noticed while watching
>> the movie in a media player that the movie clarity has
>> drastically came down as compared the trajectory visualized in
>> the OpenGL window of VMD. I just wonder is there any way I can
>> improve the clarity of movie made with VMD.
>>
>>
>> Many thanks in advance
>>
>> Anu
>
>